My Bangs Story, Part 1: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love my Forehead

It’s a rite of passage that most young girls go through on their way to womynhood (is the singular of womyn…womyn? Let me check my Berkeley Humanities manual): the growing-out of one’s bangs. It’s a difficult and upsetting process, requiring persistence and creativity. Alternately, it involves retreating to a bunker for about 3 months. And for some of us ladies who don’t learn from the past and so are doomed to repeat it, it happens more than once in their lives. Yeah, I’m one of those ladies and I’m suffering right now. Let’s back up to my decision to get bangs as a YA. (Young Adult, for those of you who don’t spend way too much time in libraries.)

My bangs at their most bang-in’. As in…sometimes they impaired my vision.

I’m going to be forthright here and admit that the reason I got bangs in my second year of college was that I thought Anne Hathaway looked super hot in The Devil Wears Prada. And you know what? She did and she still does, so I’m not going to apologize for my rationale. I printed out a picture of her and brought it into the salon, and emerged with half my face smothered in thick, blunt bangs. I loved it. As time went on, it became more of a Love-Hate relationship, often veering into this territory.

Over the years, I stopped going to salons at all (I’m a combo of poor+lazy+defiant) and trimmed my own bangs. Last year, I had a moment of counter-culture envy and attempted punky short bangs, beloved by women cooler and more punk than I am. They looked…fine. Not terrible! Fine. Right? (Don’t answer that. )

Hello, eyebrows! Haven’t seen you in a while.

But the time has come, I finally realized, to change my look. To be able to do a middle part again! After almost making this momentous decision several times in the last year, I realized I had to get real. I put a lot of thought and agonized rationalizing into things like deciding whether to get a falafal sandwich or maybe I should stick with my favorite Philly Cheezsteak (Evil Liz in my head whispers, “That one is cheaper but this one has more calories, Liz, and you DID eat a little too much hummus for lunch but also what if you got hit by a bus tomorrow, enjoy the Cheezsteak, for goodness sake but on the other hand SHUT UP VOICE”) and that’s just me trying to decide LUNCH, so you can only imagine the back-and-forth debates in my head about something that is on my actual HEAD. For a LONG TIME. Or at least a few years.

These were my bangs a month or two ago: too long to lie flat, too short to much of anything with!

But I’ve made a decision and there’s no turning back once I do that! So that down there is what my hair looks like right now, without any attempt to make it look better. That’s right, I look like Jonathan Taylor Thomas’s big sister, only I’m not pulling off the 90’s Flop as well as he did.

So, so not chic.

JTT and an alarmed cat

See the floppy-banged resemblance? But growing out bangs doesn’t have to be totally embarrassing! Stay tuned for PART DEUX, where I share some of my tips ‘n tricks to pass the time mostly-fashionably until those bangs are sleeping with the fishes.

Comments

Liz was born in the Bay Area and has never been able to escape. Her ancestors couldn't either: she's a fifth generation Bay Area-er. Luckily, this is a glorious place to be trapped, and oh so bikeable!
She enjoys dressing like your grandmother did in the 50s, your mom did in the 70s, and her childhood self did in the 90s. Her hair enjoys frequent shifts on the ROYGBIV spectrum. She over-confidently feels this is enough to qualify her as a fashion writer for Wear Your Voice.
Were she a tattoo, she would be an image of a Depression-era hobo on her lower back (this is a pun on "tramp stamp" and Liz is very much ashamed of this terrible pun. It's probably a good thing she doesn't actually have any tattoos.)
Her favorite place in Oakland is The New Parkway Theater, because it's a cheap movie theater that serves WINE and has COUCHES. Wine and couches, people! Her favorite street has to be Telegraph in Temescal: not only was this was the first place she lived in Oakland, it also has the best Korean food outside of Seoul AND the best Japanese karaoke outside of Kyoto (BYOB, folks.)